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Empathy is the answer.

Month: May 2014

We shoot messengers.
We define “happiness” as a moment of no stress, no bother, no un-met desires.
And this is why kids don’t tell you about bullying or sexual assault. Am I wrong? When I speak up about injustice or try to call someone out for adulthood bullying, I get eye rolls, audible sighs, and “don’t be a party pooper.” I can ignore them and go through with what I need to do, but it does make me hesitate the next time. How can a kid plow through this. They can’t.

Nice has two meanings.
It means someone is helpful, generous, and inclusive.
It also means unannoying, harmless, not unpleasant, non-confrontational.

But then I don’t challenge them when they say “Oh so and so is SO NICE.” Sometimes I do want to say “Well, s/he never disagrees with anything. If that’s what you mean. S/he never volunteers her time or money for anything though, so I think I’d like to call her ‘pleasant’.” but I don’t because it’s not nice.

We need a new word to distinguish and acknowledge those that are helpful and generous.

someone just made me cry and I want to say something. Without background, this may not make too much sense, but I hope you get the message.

I’m just a really really ordinary person. I truly am. (Other than the wicked dexterity I was born with.)
I’m lazy. I love my couch. I love TV. I watch reality shows.
I lack self control. I’m exceptional at finding a “valid” reason to continue doing the wrong thing.
I procrastinate. I depress. I get fed up. I’m irritable.

I’m never going to be one of those people who “do what you love for a living.” I’ll always be the person who “puts in an honest day’s work and contribute,” and I’m never going to stop being annoyed by idealistic inspirational quotes that attack my choices.

Everyone has a different set of values. To me, integrity is the most important. I’m always fair. I’m never a bystander. I’ll confront anyone who is being a jerk. And, if someone has done something nice for me or for people I care about, I’ll return the gesture, even if it meant I’m cycling for, well, about 80 – 100 hours over 9 days in GearUp4CF and still my message may not be received by all CF sufferers and their families that supported us through the Longest Game and people who donated to the event.

And if I can show along the way that an ordinary person can do it, then more people will.

We are so lucky to live in Canada where people can marry who they want and they can live as the gender they identify with and change their ID’s accordingly (i.e. processes are available even though I’m sure they are still emotionally demanding and time consuming).
Our genders as we want it to be perceived by others is increasingly respected, and how it appears on a document is becoming irrelevant. When I was being frisked at the airport (long story), I could choose a male or female officer. When I was in a bathroom and a little girl questioned about a boy (me) in a girl’s bathroom, the mom quietly told her that some people look like a boy but they are really a girl inside, and what we see with our eyes don’t matter. More and more, they just ask me what I want instead of assuming anything based on my gender. And Canadians are so nonchalant about it like it’s always been that way.
If this is a tangible change even for me (whose biological and documented genders match), it’s probably a real shift, right?

I’m not being rhetorical… Does anyone know why we still need to put a gender on our ID’s at all? Any facts, any guesses on what the point is?

Overhearing a conversation the guy is having on a speaker phone just outside my office. The other side is emphasizing on and on and on and on and on to the guy that he grew up in a “culturally diverse” (E-NUN-CI-ATE-D) environment. How everyone was always talking about equal rights among ethnicities.

I really can’t wait for the day when the equal rights is so much of a norm that no one needs to talk about it all the time. Much less hearing it being demonstratively shoved down the throat of the guy outside my office who is visible minority, sporting a strong accent, indicating how much attention he actually pays to the ethnicities.

(Though on a personal note, when I meet someone for the first time and that person launches into a speech about how they know so many asians or so many gay people and they like them just the same, I do really appreciate the effort.)